The Birthdays

by Heidi Pitlor

  Brenda wore her new perfume today, something she’d bought on a recent work trip to New York. It was a sweet scent of pears and cinnamon. She hadn’t worn perfume in years, since they’d met, really, and Daniel appreciated her wearing it today, when they would see his family.

  “You smell nice,” he offered. He reached for her stomach and pressed his hand where he imagined the small head might be, but he couldn’t feel any movement. The baby seemed to be able to sense when his hand was near—inevitably it stopped moving. “Anyone there?”

  “Move for Dan, little one.”

  “Kick for your father,” he said.

  “It’s been calm today. Maybe it’s tired from dancing around so much this week,” she said. “Maybe it’s sleeping.”

  Daniel leaned over and kissed her neck and chin. He reached between her legs and she squirmed away from him. “Hey, I’m driving!” she said. She grabbed his hand, guided it toward her stomach again and said, “Here, try now,” but Daniel pulled away. “Let’s give it a chance to wake up,” he said.

  He held his hands together and looked out the window at the other cars and minivans on the two-lane highway. He’d refused to even consider buying a van equipped for a wheelchair. He’d seen them driving down the highways like tall buildings. He’d seen the newer models, loaded up with electronic ramps and levers and sleek handrails. At least when he was in their car, he was just an ordinary man sitting beside his wife.

  He thought back to the rehab hospital and his physical therapist, Tammy Ann Green. He and Brenda always called her by her full name, as she’d introduced herself this way the first time they’d met. “It’s one of those Southern things,” she’d said, “giving everyone so many names.” She’d been assigned to him while he was in the hospital, and every day at two P.M. her wide, flat face appeared in his doorway. “Danny,” she’d say, “I know you’re awake. I saw you shut your eyes when I walked in. Come on. We’ll make this fun.” She used the word “fun” promiscuously. It was a word Daniel thought defined its users, a word that for better or worse he rarely chose to say. “What is fun about learning to sit again?” he asked her once.

  “Think of it as a game. If you give yourself little rewards each time you make progress, it could be fun. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been rewarding you with lots of praise.”

  “I’m not a puppy.”

  “Fun is a choice we make,” she said. “So is no fun.”

  There was one positive thing about Tammy Ann Green. A couple of days a week she worked for a doctor who was researching different types of laser surgery for spine injury patients. If there was something Daniel looked forward to about her visits, it was her updates on the research, though she was always vague and faintly confused about the more technical aspects of the study, as well as careful not to offer too much hope. “It’s a little itty-bitty newborn baby, this procedure. Barely out of the womb. Give it a chance to grow up before you start banking on anything.”

  Brenda was able to hide her bemusement at Tammy Ann Green, and once in a while even allied with her when Daniel was being particularly resistant, when the task before him was excruciating and Tammy Ann Green insisted cheerfully, mercilessly that he continue. When, for example, she demanded that he pull himself across the entirety of the therapy gym using only the parallel bars as support. The first time, halfway to the far wall, his arms began to pulse and his face grew hot and he finally said, “No more.” He looked at these two small women next to him, their arms folded across their chests, so cavalier about being able to stand unassisted on usable legs. “No more.” He looked to his wife for support. Any kind. Physical. Psychological. But she stood there quietly, her mouth pressed shut, and stared at the floor.

  Tammy Ann Green said, “You’re almost there.”

  “No I’m not. Listen, really, we’ll finish this another day.”

  “You’ve almost got it. Get to that wall and we’ll bring you something delicious for dinner. Anything you want.”

  “I don’t care about dinner. I want to lie down,” he said. “Brenda, come here.”

  Her eyes still on the floor, Brenda looked as if she were the one who had the impossible distance to walk.

  He finally let go of the bars and Tammy Ann Green rushed to catch him before he fell to the floor. “See?” he said, shifting in her arms. “I was finished.”

  The car creaked and swerved with the wind. Brenda adjusted her hands on the steering wheel. “You know, it’s funny you mentioned Istanbul. I just remembered this dream I had last night that we were there. It was so vivid. We were staying at a sultan’s palace, being served dinner by a cast of eunuchs.”

  “Jesus. How royal.” Brenda had gone to Istanbul as a teen with her family and had her first kiss there. He wondered whether she missed herself as a teen, her old, wide-eyed self.

  “You were trying to send your food back. You were saying something like …”—she yawned—“something like the meat was undercooked.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “I am.” She smiled.

  “You know I wouldn’t send anything back at a sultan’s palace. I promise.”

  “I know,” she said, but he wondered whether she did know this. And he wondered whether, in fact, he wouldn’t.

  A traffic jam appeared in the distance and soon they were surrounded by cars. “Shit,” he said. “If we miss this ferry, the next one isn’t for hours.”

  They slowed to a halt. She drew in a breath and pushed it out of her chest with force. “We’ll make it,” she said absently.

  Daniel fanned out his hands on his lap and glanced down at his ragged fingernails—he’d chewed his thumbnails to the quick. He looked ahead at the cars beginning to edge forward, then stop.

  “I miss sex,” he said. “You know, the way it used to be.”

  She nodded once.

  “I miss just jumping into bed with you and pulling off your shirt. I miss popping off your bra, that little tug of the clasp and then the release of your chest into my hands. There aren’t many things as great in a guy’s life.”

  “You can still do that.”

  “It’s not the same—there’s this closed door in my head now. Nothing can be spontaneous. Nothing feels exactly right anymore.”

  “That lady is on top of me,” Brenda said, glancing in the rearview mirror. “She’s going to hit me.”

  “I miss feeling the blood in my legs. Feeling horny in my feet. Did you know you could get turned on in your toes? Sometimes I actually used to feel this tingle down there when I took off your bra.”

  “Where do you want me to go?” she yelled at the rearview mirror. “You want me to sprout wings and fly?”

  Daniel turned around.

  “Don’t look,” she said.

  He saw a tiny person, barely visible above the steering wheel of a broad sedan. She could have been a teenager, possibly not even old enough to be driving. The girl looked at him with something he couldn’t quite place—anger? He shrugged at her apologetically.

  “What are you doing?” Brenda said.

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re commiserating with her.”

  “I’m not.” He turned back around.

  “You were. You just shrugged.”

  “She’s not going to hit you. For Christ’s sake, love, we’re stopped.”

  The traffic edged forward and halted again.

  “She is crawling right on top of me. Right. Up. My. Butt.”

  “Just ignore her,” he snapped.

  Brenda inched forward and stopped again. Daniel kept his focus on the back of the car in front of them, a beat-up Chevy with a license plate that read 349 BIG. He forced himself not to turn around again for the duration of the drive.

  His turned his thoughts to the baby, and he began to wonder whether it would resemble Brenda. Maybe it would look completely unlike her, strange and unrecognizable. And what if it didn’t take to Daniel? It already seemed to be sensing he wasn’t its real father. Maybe it would re
cognize those non-father hands when it was out of the womb.

  At her insistence, they had attended a workshop for parents of artificially conceived babies. In an enormous room lit by a ceiling of fluorescent bulbs, the couple seated beside them clasped each other’s hands so tightly their knuckles went yellow. Another man laughed nervously at everything the workshop leader said. Ron, a bald, middle-aged psychotherapist wearing a green turtleneck, spoke in a monotone of readying one’s inner and outer houses for a new member of the family, finding oneself in one’s child, informing the child of its origins when the time came.

  Daniel had raised his hand and asked when, usually, did a child become aware that it had come from “artificial means”?

  Ron cocked his head and said, “It varies. A child might begin questioning anytime from when she’s four years old to eight or nine. And of course in different ways later on.” He stopped and adjusted the pen behind his ear, clearly taking note of the wheelchair and trying to think of a tactful way to adjust his answer.

  “Did you have kids through artificial means?”

  “We’re here to answer questions about your children, Daniel.”

  “I’m just curious as to whether you’ve got firsthand experience.”

  The room was still. Ron said, “If you must know, my wife and I conceived naturally.”

  Later, Brenda reprimanded him. “What was that about?”

  “I was just curious.”

  “It seemed a little aggressive. He’s only there to help.”

  “He was there because he had a job,” he said, and she mumbled, “You are a real ray of sunshine lately. Even Mum noticed a nasty tone in your voice on the phone the other day.”

  Hilary called later that night, and when Daniel told her about the workshop, she snorted. “So how is your inner house handling everything?”

  “I think I need a maid, maybe even an interior decorator.”

  “Workshops should be reserved for carpenters and woodworkers. Ba-dum-bum.”

  “I suppose they exist for a reason, though. I suppose it’s not abnormal for people who use donors or whatever to get the jitters?”

  “Of course it’s not, Dan. And for the record, having a baby isn’t only scary for those who artificially conceive.”

  “Maybe you need to find yourself a workshop.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “For slutty, single, pregnant women.”

  “You’re just hilarious. I can’t stop laughing,” she said flatly.

  There was quiet on the line, and Daniel asked her whether she was planning to come East for their father’s birthday, assuming she would say, Absolutely not.

  —

  Joe drifted in and out of the lanes. He sped up without warning and then slowed, causing other cars to tailgate them or honk and zoom past, the drivers looking exasperatedly at them and then, almost imperceptibly, their faces softening as they realized it was an older man driving. But he’s not that old, Ellen wanted to call to them, he’s just let himself go. He’d lost a good amount of hair, and the hair he did have was paper white. Of course, he couldn’t control this, but his weight—his belly made him look at once like a baby and a one-hundred-year-old man.

  “Focus,” she said, “focus on those yellow lines and please try to stay within them.”

  Joe smiled and chirped, “Yessir.” Sometimes it seemed he loved nothing more than to irritate her.

  She closed her eyes and tried to think of something, anything else. Her family. It had expanded with spouses and would soon expand more. She was ready, even eager to be a grandmother and was not daunted by the idea, as some of her friends were. Perhaps because her own grandmothers had been so vital and so clearly enjoyed her and her siblings and cousins. The two women, inseparable, had both emigrated from Russia at a young age. They spoke half in botched English, half in Russian. Their husbands had died before Ellen was born and they’d virtually adopted each other as surrogate spouses. They even lived together in a small apartment in Roxbury, where they hosted poker games and dinner parties for their friends, and when she and her family visited, they were served lively meals of packaged meat, soft packaged bread and salty packaged soup accompanied by booming jazz and political debates. Ellen hoped that she would be such a woman, a fun-loving grandmother who hosted raucous events. And what sort of grandfather would Joe be? Perhaps he would quietly teach the kids about cars and turtles and wars.

  She opened her eyes in time to see him turn off the highway and onto a small road. She wasn’t sure this was the right turn, but no, Joe had a strong sense of direction and had to know where he was going. He could find his way anywhere, unlike her. She got lost whenever she ventured even slightly beyond familiar territory. She sighed, glad to leave the navigating to him. Babe clicked about in his cage.

  A couple of months ago, MacNeil asked her, “Did you choose Joe or did he choose you?” The two had been sitting in Vera’s garden drinking chardonnay. Ellen had made tortellini with snow peas for supper. Joe had been somewhere all evening—playing cards with Bill, was it?

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on. It’s always one or the other, isn’t it?” he asked, worrying a blade of grass in his hand.

  “We chose each other, I suppose. We simply went ahead and got married. There wasn’t much decision making involved,” she said. When she first met Joe, she’d just had her appendix out and her parents were driving her home from Mass General. She remembered this afternoon a little differently each time, and parts of it had vanished altogether from her mind, something that bothered her now. But that June evening with MacNeil, what she recalled vividly was her stomach still sore from the operation as she lay in the back seat of her parents’ car. They’d stopped at a deli in Newton to buy corned beef sandwiches, and left her alone when they went inside. A face appeared in the window, startling at first, but it was a handsome face with round brown eyes and a cleft chin. She felt her pulse ticking. When she rolled down the window, he asked if she was all right. (And what exactly had he said? What were his words, his tone? How could she not remember this?) She explained her situation, all the while thinking only of her pasty skin and unwashed hair, and when her parents returned, he nodded at them and stepped away. Ellen turned in time to see Joe wave, his black wingtips shiny in the sunlight. Fortuitously, her father ended up buying a new car from Joe two months later, and soon after he took Ellen out for martinis in Boston. Very quickly it seemed she’d known him her whole life, and six months later they were married. They were the last of their friends to have a wedding.

  “I’ve been thinking I chose Vera,” MacNeil said, holding his gaze on the metal table in front of them.

  Ellen brought her wineglass to her lips. “In what sense?”

  “I pulled her away from her friends and family and seduced her,” he said. The words hissed from his lips.

  The garden was quiet except for the rhythmic clicking of a sprinkler turning on and off. Ellen couldn’t sit in her own back yard without hearing the Wenderses argue or the traffic on Main Street. She shuffled her feet beneath her. “I guess Joe chose me,” she said quietly, though she wasn’t so sure. “Wasn’t that usually the way? It was up to the man to do the hard work?”

  “Not always,” he said, and half smiled at her. “Vera would have liked this, supper outside on a June evening.”

  “You’re right, she would’ve,” she said. “You’re missing her right now. I am too.”

  He looked at his lap. “We were together fifty-three years. Forever.”

  “I know.” She tried to see whether he was crying, but he’d closed his eyes. She reached for his hand and held it in the air between them a moment.

  “It’s like hell some days.”

  “What is?” she asked tentatively.

  “Continuing on.”

  “It won’t always feel this bad,” she said. “It can’t. I promise you.”

  “Can I hold you to that?”

  “You may.”

  “Say it again, w
ould you?”

  She sat up straighter. “It won’t always feel this bad. It will sometimes, but then it won’t.”

  He nodded and attempted a smile. “I definitely chose her, and it was a great choice. The best I ever made.”

  “Good,” she mumbled, and didn’t know what more to say. She rose and explained that she had to be going, that Joe would be home and hungry for his dinner soon, and MacNeil nodded as if he understood something fundamental about her. She took her time driving back that evening. She opted for the long route through MacNeil’s town, past the cornfields on the periphery, and saw a group of cows lying down on a parched field. They knew rain was coming. She drove through other, more crowded towns and then back inside the line of her own town, where smaller houses with peeling paint sat closer together, and grass sprouted from patches of dirt on the sidewalks. Tomorrow, she thought, she would wake at six, shower, make oatmeal for Joe and leave for work at seven-fifteen. She would shelve books and read to the first- and second-graders. She would have lunch with Maura Paulsen and Abigail Welty and they would tell each other whatever news they had about their families and friends. Then she would shelve more books and box up the old ones. When the workday was done, she would drive home, cook dinner for Joe, do the laundry, watch some PBS show on their old television and fall into bed, exhausted. Nothing ever changed. Even if they stopped working, how much would really change? Not that she and Joe could afford to retire right now anyway. Well, they could, but only if they wanted to penny-pinch every day, and they didn’t. A few more years, she kept telling him. We’ll wait until we’ve got a bigger cushion in the bank. But lately, Joe’d begun saying that maybe he could live with less. He could manage, they both could. She worried he’d come home one day and announce he was done with work and had submitted his retirement papers.

  “Have we gone the wrong way?” she asked Joe, now certain she’d never before seen this stretch of road.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Where’s the map?”

  “In the glove compartment?” he offered, and she could tell he’d forgotten it. Nevertheless, she rifled through the papers in there. “It’s not in here. We should stop and ask for directions.”